


Stalking Spinelli

by Kittycrackers (Calacious)



Category: General Hospital
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash, Stalking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-04
Updated: 2012-08-05
Packaged: 2017-11-11 09:49:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/477223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calacious/pseuds/Kittycrackers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spinelli's not answering any of his calls, and Jason is beginning to worry. Something's wrong, and Jason isn't sure that he'll be able to find him in time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Missed Calls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [suerum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/suerum/gifts).



Spinelli took a deep breath, closed his eyes and slid the ‘end call’ tab on his new iPhone with an index finger that was far too shaky for his own liking. The ringtone was generic, not linking him to anyone specific, yet he’d broken out into a cold sweat, his stomach churning with sick anticipation, bile rising in his throat, as his phone began to ring again.  
  
xxx  
Jason cursed beneath his breath, shoved his fingers through his hair and stabbed at the button on his phone that he knew would dial Spinelli. He waited for the call to connect, pinching the bridge of his nose and letting out a frustrated breath of air as the call went straight to voicemail, again.  
  
His finger hovered over the ‘call’ button, paused in mid-air half an inch above the screen which showed a picture of his friend, a tight, not quite smile on Spinelli’s  face. The image of his former roommate haunted him, caused his stomach to tighten in something akin to worry and his throat to close with anxiety.  
  
Since he’d broken things off with Sam, an overwhelming sense of loneliness had descended upon him. And, much to his confusion, when his thoughts dwelt upon his current state of loneliness, it was not Sam’s face, or Elizabeth’s or even Carly’s face which came to mind, but Spinelli’s. He refused to think about what it meant beyond the fact that he missed the young hacker, his friend, and wanted him back in his life.  
xxx  
Gary snarled and nearly smashed his cellphone on the ground.  How dare he ignore my phone call,  he thought to himself as he took a sobering breath and willed his body to stop shaking in anger.  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven ...he counted in his head, just the way Doctor Bennett had told him to do whenever he got so angry that he couldn’t see straight. It didn’t always work, Doctor Bennett could testify to that, but it worked well enough now.  
  
He touched the image of the man he loved, caressing  the man’s delicate features as depicted on one of many photographs he kept in the photo gallery on his phone. It was a perfect picture which captured the vulnerability of his lover - green eyes shadowed with self-doubt that only Gary could assuage; shaggy, unkempt hair that really could do with a cut; and lips, curved slightly downward in a thoughtful frown so typical of the younger man. A frown which Gary desperately wanted to turn into a smile.  
  
Happy that he’d managed to keep his anger at bay, Gary smiled and touched the ‘call’ button, eager to hear his lover’s voice again. It had been a long while since he’d heard the other man speak. Other than the younger man’s dark, yet innocent looks, Gary loved his voice, especially when it cracked with emotion. His stomach twisted with fury when the call was cut short, his throat closed up as anger swept through him. The phone didn’t even go to voicemail this time, which meant that Damian had hung up on him, and that was unacceptable.  
xxx  
  
Spinelli looked over his shoulder, his eyes scanning the streets behind him. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched, and it unnerved him. Ever since he’d taken the Gleason case, his paranoia had mounted ten-fold.  
  
Sam had been busy dealing with life in general, so it had fallen upon him to handle this case on his own. It was supposed to be simple - trail Gary Nelson, see if he was cheating on his fiance, Becky Gleason (and Spinelli could not fathom anyone wanting to cheat on the vivacious blonde) take a couple of pictures which would either prove that the man was a player or that he was faithful.  
  
Things had gone wrong from nearly the onset. Spinelli hadn’t found evidence that Gary was cheating on Becky, but he had learned that Gary led a distinctly alternative lifestyle. He’d tailed the man to a gay bar, and once he’d gotten past the shock of seeing the man dressed in drag, he’d discretely snapped off several photos and called it a night. But, before he could leave the bar, he was propositioned by the very man he’d been following, and, though it seemed that Gary had no idea that Spinelli had been tracking him, the man would not take no for an answer.  
  
By the end of the evening, Spinelli had shared a few drinks with Gary, whose stage name was Cyndi, and had exchanged numbers, only to keep from being discovered. Though he was slightly intoxicated, it wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle and he’d made it back to the office alright, but he hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that he was being followed.  
  
The next day he shared what he’d learned with a rather distraught Becky. She’d paid him, and though he felt bad for taking her money, the office rent was coming due and he had to eat.  
  
It wasn’t until a few days, several missed calls, and quite a few frantic messages later, that Spinelli realized that Gary might possibly be interested in him in ways that he couldn’t reciprocate. It wasn’t that he thought being gay was wrong or anything, but Spinelli didn’t find Gary attractive. When he’d told the man that, he was unprepared for Gary’s less than stable response.  
  
The man threatened him, told him that they were meant to be together, and when Spinelli stopped answering his phone, he started texting him, sending him obscene pictures of himself. He went to the police, but when he’d walked into the station and started explaining that he was being stalked by a drag queen, he’d been laughed at. Blushing with shame and feeling like maybe he was making a big deal out of nothing, he’d left the police station with his head bowed.  
xxx  
“Voicemail again,” Jason muttered, thumbing the end call button. He didn’t leave a message. He never did. He wanted to speak directly with Spinelli, not leave a message which could be ignored like his text messages had been.  
  
He tried to remember the last time he’d spoken with the hacker, thinking that maybe he’d said or done something to upset Spinelli. His mind came up blank. He couldn’t remember anything other than coming home one night to find the pink room deserted and a hastily scrawled note taped to the fridge letting him know that Spinelli had left.  
He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, that Spinelli wasn’t safe. The preternatural sense of impending danger seemed to increase with each passing day. With each call which went straight to voicemail or was preemptively hung up on, Jason grew more worried.  
  
And it wasn’t just about being ignored by the one person whom he would never expect to hold a grudge against him or anyone. It wasn’t even the blatant lack of communication on the normally talkative hacker’s part. It was something more, some internal prodding of his mind which screamed, ‘danger, danger, danger,’ at him whenever his thoughts wandered to Spinelli.  
  
“Get a grip,” he chastised himself, looking around to see that no one overheard him as he spoke aloud, “Spinelli’s just mad because you haven’t bothered to contact him in three months.”  
  
 _If I was Spinelli, where would I go?_  
  
Jason dismissed half a dozen places that the question brought to mind. They were places where he’d already looked for him, and, while he’d thought he’d gotten a glimpse of the hacker’s coat as he fled from a coffee shop, he doubted he’d find Spinelli there again. And fled was the only word that could be used to explain the hacker’s speedy retreat. By the time Jason had registered that it was Spinelli, there was no sign of the younger man anywhere, and he’d taken the time to look.  
  
“Come on Spinelli, answer,” he growled at the phone.  
  
It had been two weeks since he’d begun trying to contact his friend. Two weeks of calls that went straight to voicemail or which were hung up on before voicemail could pick up. His texts, painfully slow and time consuming for him to write, went completely unanswered.  
  
 _Enough is enough already_ , Jason thought, as he typed out a message - call me i need to c u - he didn’t bother leaving a name, believing that Spinelli’s phone would show who it was that had left the message. 


	2. Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The stalker meets his quarry.

Spinelli ducked into the alley and behind the dumpster, unmindful of the dirt and garbage that he knelt in. His heart was pounding hard from running and from fear. He tried to get his breathing under control, fearful that his follower would hear and find him.

The latest text message that he’d been sent had been as cryptic as ever, not even a name had accompanied it - call me i need to c u. He’d been getting a lot of those lately. Some of them were signed, ‘love gary,’ but many of them weren’t, and he wondered if the inconsistency was due to Gary’s obvious psychosis.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are," his pursuer called out into the darkness, and Spinelli held his breath as the man passed the entrance to the alley. His phone vibrated in his pocket and his heart stopped beating for the precious second it took him to hit the end call button.

He prayed that the man would pass on by, that he hadn’t heard the sound of the vibration which had sounded loud in Spinelli’s panicked state. Just as quickly as the footsteps passed, they returned, and Spinelli drew himself further into the shadows, plastering himself against the brick wall beside the dumpster. 

“I know you’re in here Damian,” Gary called softly, his footsteps faltered as he walked past the dumpster Spinelli was hiding behind. “Come out, let’s talk. I just want to talk.”

Though it wasn’t - I want to fuck you, make you mine - as one of the texts Gary had sent him had read, the man’s voice sent shivers down his spine. Spinelli held his breath and pressed deeper into the shadows.

“Why are you doing this to me?” Gary snarled, his voice harsh, barking like a dog’s.

He was mid-way through the alley, his back turned to Spinelli. He paused, scented the air and turned on his heel. The moonlight, filtering through the limited space between the buildings, refracted off the man’s eyes, making them look wild.

Spinelli closed his eyes and prayed as the man, who, in the light of the full moon, conjured up images of werewolves and vampires, stalked toward him with the gait of a predator. His heart hammered in his chest and he hoped to god that Gary couldn’t hear it, that the man really was not a werewolf or a vampire drawn to the sound of a frantically beating heart.

A rational part of his brain informed him, quite calmly, that this was not a horror movie, that werewolves and vampires were not real, and that, if he just stayed calm and in the shadows, he would be fine, Gary would not find him. The irrational side of his mind, the part which insisted that there was a full moon out tonight and that he’d always believed in werewolves, ever since he was a little kid and had watched American Werewolf in London,was what kept his heart beating at such a rapid pace that he could hear nothing else aside from the blood rushing in his ears and the cacophonic beating of his heart as it thundered against his ribcage. It was so loud that he knew Gary could hear it.

xxx  
Jason paced outside of the detective’s office, biting at a loose piece of skin on his thumbnail. A new habit he’d formed in the absence of Sam, and his worry for Spinelli. He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought to come here earlier, why it hadn’t occurred to him to see if Lucky or maybe even Dante could trace the hacker’s phone and give him a location.

As it turned out, there was a program that the police could use to track cell phones. A little harmless flirting and a promise of dinner, at Lucky’s behest, with the young detective who ran the program, and Jason had been able to convince her to trace Spinelli’s phone.

He’d been told that it might take some time, that if there was interference, she might not be able to make the trace at all. But he’d asked her to try anyway and he was banking on it working, feeling that if he didn’t find Spinelli tonight, the man would be lost to him forever.

He grew restless as he waited, watching the red second hand sweep around the clock again and again. In his mind it seemed to vacillate, one moment crawling by at a tortoise’s trot, the next, racing at the speed of light. It was maddening, and Jason let out an exasperated breath as he hit the call button yet again.

Answer, answer, answer, the syllables of his thoughts echoed his footsteps as he walked back and forth in front of the door where the blonde-haired, blue-eyed detective, a woman that Spinelli would no doubt fall for immediately, worked. His heart ached with increasing worry as the seconds ticked away. Time stilled, his heart raced, and then the door burst open and the detective, blue eyes wide as she nearly collided with Jason, bounded out of the room. There was a triumphant smile on her face.

“I’ve found him,” she said, and Jason could’ve kissed her, but there wasn’t time for that, and besides, she was Spinelli’s type, not his.

“Where is he?” Jason asked, hoping that his voice didn’t sound as desperate as he felt.

The detective gave him a curious look, and her smile faded a little, morphing into something else that Jason didn’t have the time, nor the inclination to decipher.

“You really care about him, don’t you?” she said.

Jason nodded, wondering what the hell that had to do with anything. He just needed to find Spinelli, needed to ...save him. He frowned as those two words popped into his mind, and he got a vivid image of the young man cowering beneath a tall, monstrous figure. His heart stopped beating and he nearly ceased to breathe.

The detective must’ve sensed something of his unease because she placed a hand on his arm, stilling his movement.

“He’s at this address,” she said, handing him a slip of paper. “Don’t worry about dinner,” she called out after him.

He sprinted down the hallway, past Lucky who said something he, in his haste, couldn’t even hear, past the sergeant who manned the front desk, past the riffraff who’d been brought in by police officers, and out the double doors of the police department. He slid into the driver’s seat of his SUV and peeled out of the parking lot, tires burning rubber like they did in the movies and cop shows.

“What the hell?” he said aloud as he glanced once again at the address the pretty detective had handed him. It didn’t make sense. The address wasn’t too far from where Spinelli worked, but it led him to a backstreet between a bowling alley and a seedy bar. Why was Spinelli hanging out in a sidestreet? Was the private detective on a case or was he meeting someone there?

Hurry, he’s in danger, the warning sprang to the forefront of his mind, as though from some greater, benevolent force. Jason ignored the speed limits and traffic signs as he flew through the streets, trusting, for some unfathomable reason, that there was something else, maybe even something supernatural, at work.  
xxx  
“Ah,” Gary’s voice sounded much too close for Spinelli’s comfort and he squinted into the darkness, his heart stuttered to a stop as his fears were confirmed. The man stood in front of him, his body, spotlit by the moon, appeared to be larger than normal, making him look like a werewolf.

“Please don’t hurt me,” Spinelli whispered. His voice quavered and a cold fear pooled in his gut.

Gary smiled, showing his teeth, and to Spinelli, whose imagination and nerves were overwrought, the man’s teeth looked like fangs. He cowered beneath the man’s shadow, throwing his hands up over his head.

“Please don’t hurt me,” he repeated.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Gary said, and Spinelli could feel the man looming over him, overshadowing him. “I love you.”

“You, you,” Spinelli stuttered as he tried to wrap his mind around what Gary was saying, how the man could have misconstrued the other night’s events as having meant something more to him than they did, “you don’t know me.”

“But I do,” Gary said, and he knelt beside Spinelli, pulling his hands down so that he could get a glimpse of his face.


	3. Captured

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gary has Spinelli right where he wants him.

Gary’s heart filled with pride as he found the man he’d been looking for. Damian had been very deceitful, hadn’t returned any of his calls, and though it had hurt him, he’d understood what was really going on, the game that the man had been playing with him. Damian had been coy, flirting with him, leading him on so that he could find and woo him.

“I love you,” he repeated to the man who was looking up at him with his expressive green eyes filled with tears.

He grasped the younger man’s chin with his fingers, ignoring the way Damian flinched and tried to pull away, and kissed him, forcing his tongue into the other man’s mouth. He relished the taste - the tangy salt of barbecue chips and the almost sickly sweet orange soda - of his lover.

“So good,” he breathed into Damian’s mouth.

The younger man sputtered, tried to push him away with hands too shaky to be of much use. Gary wanted to pick the man up, bring him somewhere more appropriate, but he liked seeing Damian hunched over like that, liked the power that he had over the much younger man as he towered over him.

He grasped Damian’s wrists in one hand, revelling in the power, the strength that he had, how much stronger he was than the other man. He used his other hand to remove his belt and deftly wrapped the belt around Damian’s wrists, securing them tightly to the handle of the dumpster.

“I’m going to show you what it means to be loved,” he said, smiling at the whimper that it elicited from Damian.

“What about your fiance?” Damian asked in a small voice.

Gary considered the question, tilted his head to the side, and then laughed. He’d only strung Becky along to appease his family who didn’t know about his ‘extracurricular’ activities or that he preferred men to women. He had appearances to keep up, being a Senator’s son and all.

“What Becky doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” he said, and then it occurred to him that Damian shouldn’t know about his fiance. “How do you know about Becky?” he asked, angry.

“I,” Damian seemed to shrink in on himself, but he couldn’t pull away completely because his hands were secured to the dumpster, “I, she hired me to follow you. I’m a private detective.” The last bit was said with pride, and the boy gave him an almost defiant look.

Gary couldn’t help it, he slapped the boy, hard, causing his head to careen off the side of the dumpster.

“So, you were just using me, fooling me?” he asked, snarling when the boy looked up at him, blinking as though he was about to lose consciousness. There was blood trailing down the side of Damian’s face, it looked black in the moonlight.

“I, I was trying not to blow my cover,” Damian said. His voice was so low that Gary had to strain to hear it.

Gary watched Damian for a long moment, the way his chest rose and fell as he drew in mouthfuls of air, like it was difficult for him to do so, and the way his eyes flickered between him and the dumpster. Fear was reflected in Damian’s eyes, and it stirred something inside of Gary. Something dark that his family had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to keep hidden. Something that his father had tried to beat out of him many years ago. The same something that being pledged in marriage to Becky was supposed to quench, but hadn’t.

It wasn’t a beast to be kept under lock and key. He wasn’t some Hollywood monster, turned by a contagion, transformed by the light of a full moon. He wasn’t even crazy, not really. No, what lurked inside of him - the darkness - preyed on weakness, found delight in dominating, in reigning over the terror of others. It made him feel strong and in control, like being Cyndi did, except this was different.

When he was Cyndi, he could sing, he could dance, he could express himself in ways that his father would never accept. But, here, in the shadows cast by the moon, he was a god, and Damian was his sacrifice.

“Please don’t hurt me,” Damian said again, and Gary gloried in the surge of power it gave him. He held Damian’s life in his hands.

It was with a calm, cool satisfaction that Gary knelt once more in front of Damian and placed his mouth against the younger man’s trembling lips. He kissed Damian with a passion that he’d only kissed one other person before, another young man a lifetime ago. His father had discovered them and had ended the relationship, sending the boy away.

 

He’d blamed his father for his boyfriend’s suicide several months later, not wanting to remember the blood, how it had coated his hands, thick and red, or how it had smelt - like burnt copper wires. He tried to shut out the memory of the questions he’d had to face, the money spent on lawyers to clear his name of the accusation that he had killed Luke. In the end, though Luke’s family refused to believe that the boy had killed himself, all that mattered was that a jury had bought Gary’s testimony and the closing statement of his lawyer.

The nightmares - a knife glistening in the light of a full moon plunging into a taut belly, blood surging out like a river - came and went over the years. He’d wake up in a cold sweat and go out to a club or street corner, find someone with the same fair skin and dark hair to fuck, and the urge to kill would leave him.  
xxx  
Jason cursed as he glanced at the street sign. He’d missed the narrow side street by a block and would have to double back. Out of sheer desperation, he hit the call button on his phone, and listened as it actually rang this time.  
xxx  
Spinelli’s phone vibrated in his pocket even as his heart threatened to beat right out of his chest. His insides were as cold as ice, and he felt oddly numb as Gary kissed him, the man’s tongue probing inside of his mouth like a snake. He tried to move away as the man’s hands began to caress him, sneaking beneath the band of his jeans, groping his ass.

It was an awkward position for the both of them, him on his knees, his hands stretched out before him, tied to the dumpster by Gary’s belt. Gary knelt before him, his erection pressed against Spinelli’s stomach as the man’s mouth practically devoured him.

Spinelli’s head swam from lack of air, and he grew dizzy, unable to think clearly. Gary’s hands were warm, his fingers brutal and they dug into his flesh, pinching and prodding and kneading. Terrified, and unable to breathe, Spinelli wriggled his hands, hoping to win them loose from the belt.

As the kiss deepened, Spinelli found his mind wandering. He wondered who was calling, had assumed that the calls he’d been ignoring for the past couple of weeks had all come from Gary because no one else in his small circle of friends seemed to call him any more, and since he’d had to have his phone replaced and had been unable to transfer the numbers because of the memory card being lost, he’d been unable to trace any of the calls he’d received to anyone he knew. But, he was with Gary now, and his phone was currently vibrating in his pocket, adding to the strange sensations that Gary’s touch was eliciting from him.

“What’s that?” Gary asked, suddenly pulling away from Spinelli.

Spinelli drew in huge gulpfuls of air, as though a man drowning, and sank back on his heels. Spots danced in front of his eyes, and though he opened his mouth to answer Gary’s question, nothing but a soft moan passed his lips.

The man dug in his jacket pocket and Spinelli squirmed. The phone had ceased vibrating, and Gary glared at it, tossing it aside. Spinelli blinked, his eyelids feeling almost too heavy to keep open as he watched his phone break apart - the battery pack sliding beneath the dumpster and the rest of his phone skidding across the littered pavement. He wondered, absentmindedly, if he’d be able to recover the phone once this was all over.

Gary pulled him once more into a kneeling position and this time he got behind him and Spinelli felt his jeans being tugged down toward his knees. Though his mind was fuzzy and his movements felt sluggish, he attempted to get away from Gary, knowing what was about to happen, what the man was going to do to him next.

His limbs were shaking and uncooperative, and the belt didn’t give. His wrists ached and his shoulders felt like they’d been popped out of their sockets. A low keening sound, which scared him, came from deep within his belly as Gary’s fingers dug into his hips and he felt something blunt, warm and slick slip between the cheeks of his ass.

He couldn’t breathe, his heart stopped beating and time stood still. He could feel tears, hot and wet, on his face, and he inched forward on his knees, desperate to get away, to stop what was happening.


	4. Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason finds Spinelli.

Gary fingered the pocketknife he kept in the front pocket of his jeans, and shivered in anticipation of what he was about to do. Damian was pleading with him, though he doubted the younger man was even aware of it, if the half sobbed words could even be considered pleading.

He’d gotten rid of the distraction, the vibrating cell phone, feeling betrayed at the thought that Damian had been cheating on him, that someone else had been contacting the other man, trying to come between them.

He’d make love to Damian, show the man that he was his, right here next to the dumpster. It wasn’t an ideal spot, but it appealed to his darker nature. The thought of possibly being caught made him that much harder and he pressed his throbbing dick against Damian’s entrance, not yet breaching the younger man.  
xxx  
Spinelli struggled in vain, his wrists felt like they were on fire, but the belt didn’t give. He could feel Gary pressing into him, the man’s hands were ironlike on his waist, pulling him backward even as he tried to pull away.

“Let me go,” he heard himself say, the words sounded as though they’d come from someone else, his breath hitched in his throat as Gary pushed against him.

“Please don’t,” Spinelli sobbed, “please stop, please. Don’t do this. Let me go.”

A scream was torn from him, the belt grew taut as his body surged forward and he hung by his wrists. Spots danced before his eyes and he fought to remain conscious. His heart lurched in his chest and he felt cold and distant from his body.

Somewhere nearby a lion roared, and Spinelli wondered if he was at the zoo, wandering down the path that led to the lion’s den. But it was too dark and his arms felt like they were being torn out of their sockets, his knees hurt and tears were coursing down his cheeks. He could hear himself breathing, and it scared him, it was harsh and punctuated with words that he couldn’t understand.  
xxx  
Jason’s heart skipped a beat. He couldn’t shake the cold grip of fear for Spinelli as he parked his SUV in front of the small alleyway. He leapt out of the vehicle, and ran.

He heard him before he saw him, and what he heard, the desperate pleading accompanied by grunts and moans, stole his breath from him. His heart plummeted, and he ran.

His mind refused to register what it was that he was seeing when he came upon Spinelli - the boy was tied to the dumpster and a man, a monster, was behind him, inside of him, hurting him. Something animalistic clawed its way out of his throat, and he roared.

Spinelli raised his head, and Jason saw his eyes, dull green, glistening in the light of the moon. They were filled with pain and horror, shame. Jason didn’t think, he acted on instinct alone. Something primeval moved within him, and, before the man behind Spinelli had even registered that there was someone else in the alley with them, Jason had put a bullet in his head.

The shot was neat and clean, the hole was perfectly round and not particularly large. Blood and brain fluid seeped from it, and the man slumped forward, dead.

Jason pulled the man off of Spinelli, sliced through the belt and cradled his violently shivering friend in his arms. He drove to the hospital on autopilot, his eyes never leaving the road, his ears taking in Spinelli’s broken pleas which had not yet ceased.  
xxx  
An unreal sense of warmth, the overwhelming smell of antiseptic, and brightness that was mind boggling tugged Spinelli into a wakeful state. He didn’t understand where he was at first and fear gripped his heart.

Something dark and unformed lurked in the corners of his mind and he knew that something bad had happened. That someone had been hurt. It just didn’t hit him that he’d been the one hurt until his eyes followed the IV line from the back of his hand to a clear liquid which dangled from a metal pole beside the bed where he lay.

Panic seized him and it was suddenly difficult to breathe. Gary, his mind supplied and his eyes searched the room for the demented man. Tears filled his eyes as he remembered what happened in the alley, how the man had found him, and what he’d done to him. He hurt, and he felt shame, deeper than anything he’d ever felt before - like a bruise, blossoming black and purple, ugly, something everyone could see.

“It’s okay, Spinelli, you’re safe now,” the words, spoken softly, only caused the tears to fall more heavily, and, though he’s scared, he doesn’t pull away from the arms that wrap around him. The scent, generic aftershave and gunpowder, and warmth of the arms around him soothe him back to sleep.  
xxx  
Jason felt like he’d been kicked in the gut and he silently railed against god or whatever supernatural entity it was which had led him to Spinelli. He had been too late. Spinelli had been violated in one of the worst ways possible, and he couldn’t help but feel responsible for it. The only solace he could take from this was that he’d killed the bastard who’d hurt Spinelli.

The police had questioned him, and he’d answered honestly. His eyes never left the room Spinelli had been wheeled into. The sound of the younger man’s voice lingered in the space between them as his sobbed pleas finally faded away into a soul penetrating silence.

“Self-defense,” Dante had summed up, but Jason didn’t care if he was put away for murder. He felt hollow and weak and shamed, deserving of death.

“Jason,” Elizabeth placed a warm hand on his shoulder and he tore his gaze away from the exam room, “he’s going to be okay.”

“I was too late,” Jason said, his voice cracking. He shouldn’t be crying, but the tears came nonetheless and Elizabeth held him as he cried. “I’m always too late,” he intoned, his breath hitching when the tears finally subsided.

“No you’re not,” Elizabeth said, her brown eyes piercing and filled with fire, “maybe you weren’t meant to save him from this, Jason. Maybe you were meant to be there for him in the aftermath, like Lucky was for me. Spinelli’s going to need you, more than ever now, are you willing to be there for him?” Her eyes searched his as he thought about what she’d said.

“I wasn’t there for Sam,” he whispered, feeling shame and self-hatred, “I couldn’t help Michael. What makes you so sure that I’m what Spinelli needs? That I won’t fail him?”

“Because you’re here now,” Elizabeth said, patting him on the knee, “and you haven’t left. You were there when you needed to be, trust that. You were there when you were meant to be,” she repeated, squeezing his hand.

“If I’d have gotten there just a minute earlier,” Jason said, thinking of how he’d gone too far, had overlooked the alley and had to double-back, “I’d have been able to stop it from happening in the first place and saved him from this pain.”

Elizabeth’s eyes filled with tears. “I know how you feel, but Jason, you aren’t to blame for this, and right now, Spinelli needs you to be there for him. He doesn’t need your guilt or your shame. He doesn’t need your pity. He needs your support and love, and if you can’t give that to him, you need to leave right now.”

The thought of leaving Spinelli now, after what had happened to him, left a bitter taste in Jason’s mouth. He shook his head.

“I’m not going to leave,” he said, feeling his conviction grow as he said the words aloud, “I’ll be there for Spinelli.”

Though guilt gnawed at his gut because he hadn’t been there in the same way for Sam or Michael, he’d been hurting too much himself then, this felt right. He wished that he could turn back time, change how he’d handled what had happened to his nephew and his ex-wife, but he couldn’t. All he had was now, and he was going to take it, do the right thing this time around.

“Good, because he’s going to need you,” Elizabeth said, a sad smile gracing her lips. “You’re a good man, Jason Morgan, remember that,” she said, and then she stood, placed a kiss on his cheek and left.


	5. Recovering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason doesn't leave.

When he woke up for the second time, everything that had happened in the alley came back to him swiftly and he didn’t want to open his eyes. He was still in pain and he just wanted to die.

“Spinelli?” Jason’s voice was quiet, and not at all like Spinelli is used to it being when the man says his name. “Spinelli are you awake?”

No, Spinelli thought, but he didn’t voice this aloud. He wanted Jason to go away, to leave him alone because he feels hurt and ashamed and vulnerable. He doesn’t want Jason to see him like this. He hasn’t seen the man in months, certainly a couple more months won’t make a difference, and maybe, by then he’d be almost normal again. If he can ever be normal again after what had happened to him.

“I’ll be here when you’re ready to open your eyes,” Jason said, and he sounds tired to Spinelli.

Spinelli falls asleep wondering if he can take Jason at his word, if the man really will be there when he wakes up again.  
xxx  
“Welcome home,” Jason said, keeping his voice mellow, in spite of his desire to express some of the giddiness that he feels.

It was an odd feeling for him and he had no idea what to do with it, or why bringing Spinelli back to the penthouse has brought it out, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to take anything for granted anymore, least of all Spinelli.

Spending the past week at the hospital, beside Spinelli’s bed, watching while the young man started to come to terms with what had happened to him, he realized that he’d more than missed him, and that he felt something a lot like love for Spinelli.

It was a feeling that made him more than a little nervous, but he wasn’t afraid of it, and was willing to explore it, to take things as slowly or as quickly as Spinelli wanted him to.

The small smile that Spinelli gave him caused his heart to lurch and he felt butterflies in his stomach. It wasn’t much yet, but for now, it would do.  
xxx  
Spinelli didn’t know what to make of Jason’s offer to return to the penthouse, but he didn’t want to be on his own, and so he had agreed to move back into his old room. Soon, though, his room had become Jason’s as the man had taken to slipping into bed with him to help him through the nightmares which only seemed to fade away when the man was with him, holding him as he slept.

Laney assured him that there was nothing wrong with Jason sleeping with him, that it wasn’t a sign of weakness, and that his mounting attraction to the other man was nothing to be ashamed of, that it didn’t mean that he had wanted what Gary had done to him. He didn’t believe her at first, but once Jason had become a fixture in his bed and the other man didn’t appear to be put off by him, he started to accept it as truth, and began to hope that maybe, where all of his other relationships with blonde-haired bimbos had failed, this one might not.  
xxx  
“Hey, Spinelli,” Jason peered critically at his reflection in the mirror, he was nervous and excited, and completely flummoxed by the conflicting feelings that this night was bringing out in him, “you almost done in the shower?”

He glanced at his watch, it had only been fifteen minutes, but he still worried about the younger man when he showered for longer than ten minutes. It had been almost a year since he’d found the younger man in the alley, and, while Spinelli still had nightmares on occasion and panic attacks, he’d come a long way since then. So had Jason.

He’d started going to counseling sessions with Spinelli when the younger man had insisted upon it, telling him that he had something like survivor’s guilt, and that unless he was willing to deal with it, he’d have to move out of the penthouse. Jason hadn’t liked the sessions at first. He didn’t like to think about what had happened, how he’d failed Michael, Sam and Spinelli, and he hated talking about his feelings.

But, as he continued to attend the sessions, and he started to be honest with himself, Laney and Spinelli, he began to let go of some of the guilt. The sessions had also helped him to open up to himself about who he was and what he wanted. They had helped to both spur and save his fledgling relationship with Spinelli, and for that he was grateful.

“Some people like to take nice, long showers,” Spinelli answered irritably, opening the curtain slightly to scowl at Jason.

“And some people are concerned about global warming,” Jason shot back, grinning as Spinelli stuck his tongue out at him, but shut the water off a few seconds later.

“Taking a shower that lasts longer than your standard ten minutes isn’t going to make much of a dent in the ozone layer,” Spinelli said as he stepped out of the shower.

Jason admired Spinelli’s body, watching him through the mirror as he toweled off.

“Stone Cold, as attractive as I find your bare ass, you might want to finish getting dressed,” Spinelli said as he walked out of the bathroom they shared.

Jason caught him around the waist and pulled him tight against his chest, nuzzling his wet hair with his cheek. Spinelli sighed, leaning against him, and then rolled his eyes.

“If you keep this up, we’re never going to make it to the movie on time,” Spinelli said, pulling away from him and scooting out of reach. “And, you know if it was just the two of us, the Jackal would be okay with that, but as we are meeting the Valkyrie and the ever brooding Prince of Darkness...” Spinelli trailed off, knowing that he didn’t need to say anything else.

Jason swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat as he watched Spinelli get dressed. He pulled his jeans and boots on when Spinelli cast him an impatient look, and, as the doorbell rang, he kissed Spinelli, wanting to keep the man to himself for a few seconds longer.  
xxx  
Spinelli glanced sidelong at the man sitting next to him in the theater, and smiled, relaxing when Jason squeezed his hand. There were still mornings he woke, half expecting to find himself back in the office, sleeping on the air mattress he’d set up in a corner of the room, only to find Jason sprawled out next to him, one of his arms dangling from the bed and the other tucked protectively around his waist.

“I love you,” Jason whispered in his ear, sending shivers down his back, and Spinelli mouthed the words back.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Suerum. She requested the h/c_bingo square, stalkers, for her birthday. This is a belated gift.


End file.
